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A Pan-Pearl River Delta mission gets results from a visit to Portugal and Germany

With the need to better protect the environment and lead a green lifestyle, the Macao SAR Government arranged for 60 delegates of the Pan-Pearl River Delta Region to undertake a business mission to Portugal and Germany in March 2018. The mission was designed to find out more about the advanced technologies used in those European countries to protect the environment. The aim is to boost Macao’s role as a conduit for interaction among people in government, business and academia in Europe and the Pan-Pearl River Delta (PPRD) Region, so they can learn from each other and thus enhance exchanges and co-operation in the fields of business and environmental protection.

Business representatives among the delegates said the visit widened their perspective, yielding fruitful outcomes and laying foundations for further co-operation.

New markets explored

The Government has been arranging visits to places abroad for PPRD representatives since 2016, helping them look into markets in the Portuguese-speaking Countries and in Europe. The delegation that visited Portugal and Germany from 11 to 19 March was led by the President of the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) Jackson Chang. The delegation included representatives of government departments and companies from across the PPRD region.

The members had a busy schedule. They visited environmental companies, business chambers and many other organisations. And they had meetings with trade and economic representatives of the Chinese Consulate-General in Frankfurt and the Chinese Embassy in Portugal.

Mr Chang says the visit highlighted the function of being the Commercial and Trade Co-operation Service Platform between China and the Portuguese-speaking Countries that Macao performs, and widened the view of environmental protection taken by the representatives of government, business and academia in the Pan-Pearl River Delta Region. The visit allowed delegation members to compare the green technologies of Europe with the ones of China, with a view to using the respective advantages of those technologies to complement each other in endeavours to grow the environmental protection business or enter new markets.

The visit did more than just making connections with the counterparts in Portugal and Germany, Mr Chang says. The Macao enterprises represented in the mission were also put in touch with businesses elsewhere in the region.

Exchanges are instructive

Companhia de Sistemas de Resíduos Lda. (CSR) Executive Director Morse Lei was part of this “green voyage”. Mr Lei says the mission brought together people from various fields in the region and that Macao performed its unique function as a Commercial and Trade Co-operation Service Platform between China and the Portuguese-speaking Countries. Since the visit, the delegates have remained in contact though social media, continuing their exchanges on topics from professional technology to daily life stories.

Mr Lei emphasised the great expertise to be found among the delegates. He says communicating with people in government and business gave him a better grasp of environmental protection policy and expectation in various parts of Mainland China, and an appreciation of the global prominence of the Mainland Chinese environmental protection industry.

The schedule included inspections of a sewage treatment plant, river purification infrastructure, a plastic sorting plant and other green facilities in Germany and Portugal. Mr Lei says Macao could draw wisdom from such facilities, such as the NIR spectroscopy used in sorting plastic. He says the technology is advanced and that the whole process of handling the waste is fully automated. Macao may have insufficient space for a similar plant because it has less land than most European cities, but the technology may still be applied in other fields, he says.

Exchanges build expertise

Another Macao member of the party was eNovation Technologies Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Sam Liu, who lauds the degree of expertise to be found among his fellow delegates. Mr Liu says that unlike previous missions, which brought together only people in government or businesspeople, the latest mission included representatives of government, businesses and academia, so enhancing the connection within the sector itself and facilitating communication between the industries and government departments. He says the new formation of a delegation helps introduce companies to the concepts of various environmental protection policies and mindsets about it among the sector and government departments, effectively broadening the horizons of the representatives of the environmental protection industry.

Mr Liu says the visit taught companies about the characteristics of the environmental protection industries elsewhere so that the companies may use the respective advantages of those industries and their own to complement each other, and thus increase co-operation. For instance, the German industry is well known for the attention to detail shown in its best facilities, he says.

The visit has offered a productive exchange platform for all the companies involved, he says. He met some new Macao companies in the environmental protection industry with which he rarely had chance to co-operate in the past, and learned about the abundant business opportunities in the Mainland Chinese market, which is much further-reaching than the Macao market, whether in the size of the projects undertaken or in the scope of the environmental protection industry.

Mr Liu says the visit was just the start of the process of strengthening ties among businesses in the PPRD region, and Germany and Portugal, as many people from those parts of the world also attended the 2018 Macao International Environmental Co-operation Forum and Exhibition (MIECF), held in April, seeking further opportunities for co-operation.

German and Portuguese companies report that they have took this opportunity to make connections with the delegates representing the Pan-Pearl River Delta Region, paving the way for future co-operation. The visitors believe that with Macao performing its role as a place where Mainland Chinese enterprises and those in the Portuguese-speaking Countries can conduct business, there is room for greater co-operation among all concerned to achieve a win-win outcome.